CURIE, Marie (1867-1934)

CURIE, Marie (1867-1934)
Part-printed document signed (‘M. Curie’), a certificate of radium content ‘Certificat no. 1641. Dosage de Radium par le Rayonnement ?’, Institut du Radium, Paris, 27 July 1921.
In French. One page, 315 x 210mm, completed in the hand of an assistant and signed by Curie.

The first female Nobel Laureate Marie Curie signs a certificate confirming the radium content of a sample submitted to the Laboratoire Curie. A gold ‘needle’ containing a sample submitted to the Laboratory on the 25 July by a Monsieur Sonnler is returned to him, certified as containing 3.49 milligrammes of radium.

Marie and Pierre Curie (1859-1906) were pioneers in the study of radioactivity, first discovered by Henri Becquerel: when the three were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work Marie became the first woman to be awarded a Nobel medal. After Pierre Curie was killed in a street accident in Paris, Marie continued her research, becoming the first woman professor at the Sorbonne in 1906 and winning a second Nobel Prize in 1911 – this time in Chemistry – for her discovery of the radioactive elements polonium and radium. The Institut du Radium was founded in 1909, within which the Curie Laboratory under the direction of Marie was dedicated to physics and chemistry research; the establishment of the Curie Foundation in 1920 marked a deliberate shift in the focus of the Institut, towards the exploration of the therapeutic applications of radiation.

Provenance
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